This animated visualization represents a time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide in parts per million (ppm) from 1979 to 2016, and then back in time to 800,000 years before the present.

SYNOPSIS: In this lesson, students discuss what they know about air quality, play a game to facilitate understanding of air quality, and create an action plan to inspire solutions in their community.

SCIENTIST NOTES: In this lesson, students will learn about air quality and air pollution and its impacts on the human body. They will also discuss some of the causes of air pollution and think about ways they can make changes in their life to reduce the air pollution footprint. The resources on air quality all cite where they are getting their data from. Videos and links have been reviewed for accuracy. This resource is recommended for teaching.

POSITIVES:
-This lesson utilizes student choice, active listening, and active participation.
-The How’s Your Atmosphere game is engaging, and the Game Cards give specific examples of everyday actions that can have a positive or negative impact on air quality.

ADDITIONAL PREREQUISITES:
-Teachers should know how to use the resources Padlet or Jamboard.
-Teachers should know how to facilitate a Socratic seminar style discussion.

DIFFERENTIATION:
-Movement is encouraged but not required for this game.
-Students in class who need support can be paired or grouped with others who can assist and give guidance.

Unit 3 addresses concepts related to urban-atmosphere interactions. The content explores how urban landscapes and atmospheric constituents modify or interact with the atmosphere to affect temperature, clouds, rainfall, and other parts of the water cycle. Fundamental concepts of weather and climate are established. The unit then transitions to focus on the "urbanized" environment and its complex interactions with the atmosphere. Students will learn about interactions such as 1) urban modification of surface temperature and energy exchanges; 2) water cycle components; 3) cloud-rainfall evolution within urban environments; and 4) applications to real societal challenges like urban flooding. The unit integrates basic meteorological/climatological analyses, geospatial thinking, and integration of scientific concepts within a real world context.

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In this optional activity, students analyze maps of wind patterns from three levels in the atmosphere in order to infer global atmospheric circulation patterns and their role in balancing the radiation budget they established in Units 4 and 5. The main activity is a jigsaw in which students explore a single map on their own prior to class, confer with their classmates in specialty groups, and then synthesize atmospheric circulation for an assigned latitudinal zone. In these synthesis groups, students create maps and cross-section concept sketches to use in a full class discussion at the end of class. A follow-up assignment asks students to infer the relationship between global atmospheric circulation patterns and precipitation and then predict possible consequences of changes in these patterns due to global warming.

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key words: energy conservation, law of atmospheres, satellite drag

The goals of this exercise are to put the laws of large-scale orbital dynamics into a space physics context while introducing numerical and semi-empirical modeling methods. The spreadsheet simulation consists of two linked spreadsheets and their associated plots. One spreadsheet contains density and temperature for the lower 1000 kilometers of the Earth's atmosphere, and the other contains the orbit simulation. A concept map guides students in developing formulations for describing satellite motion in an atmosphere whose density varies exponentially. At the conclusion of the laboratory students produce temporal profiles of altitude, velocity, energy, and drag force on a low-Earthorbiting satellite. A post-laboratory questionnaire focuses student thought on the physics and modeling process.

This course is an introduction to basic ideas of geophysical wave motion in rotating, stratified, and rotating-stratified fluids. Subject begins with general wave concepts of phase and group velocity. It also covers the dynamics and kinematics of gravity waves with a focus on dispersion, energy flux, initial value problems, etc.

Students do background reading on the atmosphere (see URLs below). The questions in this activity are divided up into atmospheric structure, stratospheric ozone, and acid rain. This activity helps students to understand the basic structure of the atmosphere as well as ozone and acid rain problems.

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This is a kinesthetic activity that demonstrates how shortwave radiation emitted by the sun and longwave thermal radiation emitted by the earth interact differently in the atmosphere. It allows students to experience this difference and reinforces their understanding of greenhouse gases as well. Students should have an understanding of shortwave and longwave thermal radiation and of greenhouse gases before doing this activity, but there is a minimal amount of background information about those topics included in this pdf. Additional resources/background info for teachers can be found on the website for the Little Shop of Physics.

In this demonstration, students explore the concept of greenhouse warming. They determine whether an increase in the amount of heat-trappping gases in the atmosphere can cause the temperature on Earth to rise. Students compare the relative heat retention in two experimental systems that are identical except for one being covered with plastic wrap. Materials required include two small aquarium tanks, plastic wrap, two clamp lamps with 60 watt bulbs, modeling clay, rocks and pebbles, and two thermometers. Teacher background information, student worksheets and a scoring rubric are included. This is Activity 1 of the module Too Many Blankets, part of the lesson series, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change.

In this video profile produced for Teachers' Domain, meet teacher Dustin Madden, an IŰ__ŒóíŠupiaq who hopes to inspire students to take an active role in protecting the natural environment by giving them a foundation in math and science.

Learn about the layers of the atmosphere and the challenges the engineering team overcame in planning and executing Alan Eustace's world record-breaking jump.

This activity demonstrates how to import data from the Internet and make EXCEL graphs. The instructions included were provided by a classroom teacher who used these instructions with high school students.

Students use an interactive online mass balance model help understand the observed levels of chlorofluorocarbon CFC-12 over the recent past.

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The following are potential questions that could be used in a gallery walk activity about Atmospheric Mosture. The questions are organized according to the cognitive level at which students are engaged, using Bloom's Taxonomy.

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Watch the fifth episode of our #EZScience series to learn how NASA uses balloon science to better understand our planet and universe.

In this activity, students will use actual CO2 data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii to create their own "Keeling Curve"; conduct an analysis of the data; and, attempt to match it to a mathematical function. They will then use the function to predict increases in CO2, both historical and future.

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Atmospheric methyl chloroform concentration is modeled as an extension of the generic water tank structure. Simulated and observed concentrations are used to estimate the global atmospheric lifetime of methyl chloroform and its 1989 to 2009 emission history.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This course introduces the basic science underpinning our knowledge of the climate system, how climate has changed in the past, and how it may change in the future. The course focuses on the fundamental energy balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation in the climate system, and how this balance is affected by greenhouse gases. We will also discuss physical processes that shape the climate, such as atmospheric and oceanic convection and large-scale circulation, solar variability, orbital mechanics, and aerosols, as well as the evidence for past and present climate change. We will discuss climate models of varying degrees of complexity, and you will be able to run a model of a single column of the Earth’s atmosphere to simulate many of the important elements of climate change.
This course is part of the Open Learning Library, which is free to use. You have the option to sign up and enroll in the course if you want to track your progress, or you can view and use all the materials without enrolling.

In this activity, students use the absorption spectra of greenhouse gases to explore the nature of the greenhouse effect.

In this kinesthetic activity, the concept of energy budget is strengthened as students conduct three simulations using play money as units of energy, and students serve as parts of a planetary radiation balance model. Students will determine the energy budget of a planet by manipulating gas concentrations, energy inputs and outputs in the system in this lesson that supports the study of climate on Mars, Mercury, Venus and Earth. The lesson supports understanding of the real-world problem of contemporary climate change. The resource includes a teacher's guide and several student worksheets. This is the second of four activities in the lesson, How do Atmospheres affect planetary temperatures?, within Earth Climate Course: What Determines a Planet's Climate? The resource aims to help students to develop an understanding of our environment as a system of human and natural processes that result in changes that occur over various space and time scales.